Here's to Him
by Cheddar the Cheese
Summary: What happened in the nights following Cedric's death in the Hufflepuff common rooms. please r/r!


Title: Here's to Him  
  
By: Cheddar  
  
Summery: Three days after Cedric's death, the Hufflepuff house sits in the common room.  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Distribution: Tell me first  
  
Feedback: Please give me your most honest opinion of this fic.  
  
Dedication: It's for a friend of mine who's friend died. So, Fern, even if you never read this, Here's to Him.  
  
  
  
Hufflepuff. A Hogwarts house full of bright young faces like any of the other three houses in the school. In fact, we are just like any of the other houses. We're supposed to be the patient and loyal ones but we have our back stabbers too. Just because we are loyal doesn't mean every one is perfect. But that's not why I'm writing this. You don't need nor do you want to hear about what goes on in Hufflepuff house. No one ever really wants t hear about us.  
  
This little story is for anyone who has ever been on the outside of something huge. Something so bug that every one seems to be in on it. But You're just looking in, and yet, at the same time, you were right in the middle of everything. I'm sure you all heard about Cedric and how he... well, he's gone so it doesn't matter what version of the story you heard. We all know what happened later. But what you didn't hear about was what happened in those following days... Unafraid of toil my ass. We were in for a lot of it in the coming years and some, like myself, welcomed it as an escape to the horrors of life.  
  
I can remember not caring about the whole Triwizard thing. That's just the kind of person I am. I'd always rather be reading. I read my book while the four of them (note the 'four' of them in a 'tri'wizard contest...) played silly games in that maze. It should never have happened like that. Harry should have been sitting in the stands with the rest of the school. He was supposed to be just like any other kid at the school but he never would be. Oh no. Not the Harry Potter. Damn him. He had to be the best. He had to be the noble Gryffindor and share the cup with Cedric. They had to disappear.  
  
I admit to putting my book down then. You would too if your friend just up and disappears with a boy known for bad things always finding him in situations when he ran off with his friends.. We waited there. The whole school sat in the stands with the families and spectators. Whispers broke out among the ranks as the theories flew. No one knew what in hell was happening down there. No one had a clue.  
  
A bit up the row from me, Harry's friends, Ron and Hermione, were going crazy. Hermione looked ready to cry and Ron's sister, Ginny, was already streaked with tears. It was no secret that she was madly in love with the Potter boy. But it was a bad sign if they were just a lost as the rest of us. We all waited and waited with no sign of them until finally the both appeared on the lawn. Harry lay with that damned cup in one hand and Cedric's wrist clamped in his other. Cedric was dead.  
  
It was pure and utter chaos for a while. No other words describe it. And time ran in a blur of faces and tears for the next few hours into the next night. The whole school grieved but not like us... Not like us. No one hurt as much as us. We had lost one of our own.  
  
The rest of the school was reacting. The Ravenclaws were sympathetic. They let us cry on their shoulders even when the pain cut them too. Slytherin was cool. They made no move to be nice to us and yet they were not cruel like normal. They stood aloof from it. They seemed to be living up to their self centered reputation. But Gryffindor... They were the worst.  
  
They were pitying. Pitying! That damned bunch of self sacrificing, "we're- so-much-more-perfect-than-all-of-you!", egotistical bastards pitied us! And why? Because one of their's killed ours. It was as if they wanted to apologize but they could never fill the emptiness that now filled our house.  
  
I can still see it now. Every night, like clock-work. I thought it might go on forever. We all sat in the common room at night. I remember it the three days after. We'd sit there and not a single word was spoken. It was like we had died with him. The sprit of us all had gone with that boy to where ever he went and we'd come back dead too. Because he was, you know. He was just a boy. A seventeen year old boy who will never see the sun or the moon again.  
  
Think of it this way. Next time you leave your house, look at the people around you. See the druggies and Pimps? That little old lady with her shopping cart full of cans and the bratty children running amok under their parents feet? You see that teenage boy with his friends? The one who's kind of gangly and awkward. He might have brown hair or it might be blue but that doesn't matter. That's not who he is inside Think of that boy as Cedric. When he gets killed by a gang and then that gang pities his friends, that's us, the friends. Being pitied by the Gryffindors.  
  
And so night after night we sat in silence until one night, that air was so empty from the lack of sound that I thought it might crack. Just break and splinter like a broken dream sending shards far and wide in every direction, stabbing us where we say. But it never came.  
  
My little sister sat next to me staring at nothing. She was like so many others. In a state of utter shock. They could not move. Their eyes did not blink and their hair did not even allow its self to be blown be the wind. Emily looked right a head. At HIS chair.  
  
We always left that chair empty when we gathered like this. Ever since that night. It was one of those unwritten rules. No one said anything about it but no one sat there either. It was Cedric's favorite chair and we would never take that from him. It was all that was left of him. That damned chair with its worn yellow gold velvet with the black piping. So worn in places that the wood frame came through. It was all that was left of him.  
  
After a while, Emily turned her head to look at me. Her eyes were scary. They were empty but full of hate and fear and confusion. The eleven year old did not know what was going to happen. None of us did and I'm not sure even now if we really wanted to know.  
  
"Cat?" Her voice came out in a waver. People looked at her coldly. Who was this first year to think she could break this hallowed silence. They looked at me as if to tell me to shut her up. I couldn't and so she continued. "Catrina? Tell me about Cedric?" Her question and face were so innocent in that quiet place. Then I understood why she was asking. She had not known him very well.  
  
But she had started something in that cold room when her words hit the still air. After her that, the silence seemed heavier and more oppressive than before but still, no response did she receive from any of them. "Cat, please," her quiet voice came again. It was stronger this time but no less innocent and endearing.  
  
"You want to know about Cedric?" Susan Bones rose to her feet. Angry tears pilled down her face. "You want to know about him, Emily?" Some one grabbed her arm to pull her back but she shook them off. I think it was Justin. Emily sank into my side. But no one said a word. Susan wanted to push it. "Cedric was the best person you could ever have had the pleasure to meet! He was everything those damned Gryffindors say they are but never will be! Everything..." Her voice fell silent as she dissolved into tears once more.  
  
From the back of the room came a small voice: "Here, Here" they said in a horse whisper. I don't know who it was. But Susan had said what we'd all been thinking. Each and every one of us.  
  
Wayne Hopkins stood up and I saw how his knees knocked together. He looked at his hand. Empty. But he raised it anyway. As if to toast someone. But who was there to toast? The chair? That damned empty CHAIR? With its old velvet covering and piping? What else was there? Cedric certainly wasn't there to receive it in person. "To Cedric. I wish... I wish we all could have known you better." People stared at him in disbelief but he too had set something off.  
  
Owen Cauldwell rose too. And he too toasted in the direction of the empty chair. "To Cedric. I wish we... I wish we all could have had the same privilege as me... To be able to say, 'I played Quidditch with Cedric Diggory.' Here's to you, Ced."  
  
Hannah Abbott too rose her empty hand the empty chair. Her words were nearly choked out by the bobs that now racked her slim body. "To Cedric... May where ever heaven is be a Quidditch pitch built just for you. Here's to Cedric."  
  
People all over the room stood and rose their hands to the chair. Some spoke but others held on to the silence that Emily had broken. I felt my own tears burn rivers down my face. I felt those rivers turn to valleys. I felt like my skin was peeling away from the bones. and one thing kept running through my mind: It should have been me. Or any of us... But not Cedric.  
  
Stories passed by my ears but did not go in. i knew them all anyway. People toasted his intelligence and strengths. They toasted his wit and they toasted his glories on the Quidditch pitch. And through it all my mind screamed: "He's gone."  
  
I know I loved him. I know too that he would have hardly given me a second thought but I still loved him. And as the stories and glories sang throughout the thick air I knew that love was what forced us each to our feet one-by-one to silently tell him good-bye. For how else were we to tell him this? Was it better to speak to his Chair and to his coffin? Yes.  
  
Looking around I realized that I was the only one left sitting. Even Emily had risen and said her piece to a boy she'd hardly known. Now I understood her bravery. All of their's. We were the brave ones. Us Hufflepuffs with our loyalty and love. We were braver than any Gryffindor could ever hope to claim. We'd broken our own rules and walls we'd built up around ourselves. Me knees shook too as I rose to join the masses. I understood it all now. I extenuated me hand to the Chair. My hand was empty. The chair was empty. My mind was empty.  
  
You're always supposed to know just what to say at a time like this. Praise the person's deeds or life. Tell others a story about him. People had laughed and cried that night and now they all were looking at me. But I had no words. I raised my hand a little higher and made it a little steadier.  
  
"Here's to Cedric," was all I said. The silence seemed to have descended upon the room once more. And again I said in a shaky voice: "Here's to Cedric Diggory: The boy who... should have lived." And it was the truth.  
  
The room echoed my words. "Here's to Cedric." And ever after that chair has remained empty. No one sits there. We tell the first years all we can about Cedric and his chair stays open. As if he'll someday come bounding in the room with a new way to beat Gryffindor and to tell a story to some frightened first year about werewolves or vampires. And we all wait for the day.  
  
I hate to say it but even now I can hear the words we said that night. Before we knew what had really happened. Before You-know-who came back. Before half the school was killed. After Cedric death was a common visitor in our common room but none affected us like Cedric Diggory's death. A long time ago, some one told me the first time is always the worst and that after that it isn't any less painful, it's just easier to take.  
  
But I can still hear it some times. Mostly late at night. I'll be sitting alone somewhere, in a bar or my living room, and that same silence will descend upon me and as if I am under water or very far away, I'll hear it: Some times softly and some times loud as thunder in my ears. But it's always there. The memory of that night and the empty chair. And The voices tell me, as if to mock me:  
  
"Here's to Cedric..."  
  
  
  
PLEASE REVIEW 


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